Customer Reviews

The Best American Travel Writing 2003

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I get the "Best American" series to stay current with what some of our best writers are saying, but this year's editor has led me down the garden path.

At least 50% of the articles dwell on environmental or social causes. Yes, I suppose the writers had to travel somewhere to get their data, but their essays are not about travel; rather, they are about causes.

I will hope that, for 2004, the series publishers get a handle on things and place social essays in the "Best American Essays..." collection and reserve the Travel volume for just that.

Though there are a few funny pieces in this year's travel anthology, Frazier's ("On the Rez") bent is for serious things happening in unhappy and often unlovely places. Tom Bissell's "Eternal Winter" explores the death of the Aral Sea, a hopeless Soviet-made ecological disaster with endless ghastly repercussions in a surreal landscape. Peter Chilson writes about the Tuareg rebellion at the edge of the Sahara, in Niger, which perpetually resumes with the harmattan, the dust and sand storms that cripple visibility, allowing swooping raids on merchant caravans through the desert.

Scott Carrier witnesses the Afghan view of war and life in Mazar-e-Sharif and makes a harrowing road trip to bombed-out Kabul, while Andrew Solomon, there for much the same purpose, discovers the wonders of Afghan food and hospitality.

Ecological warriors are the focus of Patrick Symmes' "Blood Wood," and Tom Clynes' "They Shoot Poachers, Don't They?" Symmes journeys along the Brazilian Amazon meeting fierce and endangered activists striving to stem the lucrative, illegal, and often deadly mahogany trade. Clynes reports on American conservationists in the Central African Republic. "Their mission was to drive out the marauding gangs of Sudanese poachers who were rapidly wiping out the region's elephants and other animals. Their authority: shoot on sight."

There are pieces on journeys made for their own sake, but these are no vacations. Lawrence Millman has a funny, scary piece on being stranded on an uncharted, uninhabited desert island - in the arctic. And Kira Salak follows the trail of doomed early-19th century explorer Mungo Park, paddling 600 miles down the sometimes very hostile Niger River in an inflatable kayak.

For lighthearted contrast there's Michael Specter's profile of rapper Puff Daddy, now a fashion designer, in Paris for Fashion Week, and Lisa Anne Auerback's "Pope on a Tow Rope," exploring Pope John Paul II's Polish skiing days.

Off the beaten track and often intense, from Wilmington, Delaware to Timbuktu, this all-around fine compilation has all-around appeal.

This is one of the best books I've read in years. Every night I would randomly open to a different story and be transported.

I think the title is a bit misleading, though. This is not full of tourist stories. They are just very well-written articles that happen to take place in a land foreign to the author. For instance, a Jewish woman's journey to the Ukraine to uncover the story of relatives that were killed by the Nazi's. Not all the stories are quite so serious, in fact there is one by Jack Handey (Saturday Night Live writer) about a men's camping trip that was absolutely hysterical.

For anyone who values great writing and well-told story, you will definitely appreciate this book and the others in the series.

This book contains several interesting pieces on travel as well as articles about activities related to specific geographical places. I am a fan of Ian Frazier's, especially his book On the Rez, and was glad to see that he was editing this collection.

There are three pieces that stand out for me. The first one is called 'Getting Jiggy' and it is about folks who get together on the Seattle area piers and jig for squid. The piece reads like a funny ethnography.

The second piece is called 'The Forest Primeval' and is a reprint from the original in Harpers Magazine. It is about the Congo - - its people, politics, animals, and current issues. The article describes the horrific problems with forest elephant poaching. To date, 700,000 elephants have been poached from this area., Because elephants are the kingpin of forest life, the entire ecological system is off-balance. There is also a lot of violence in the Congo. "Every Tom, Dick and Harry has an AK 47". This is one of the reasons that forest elephants are being killed at such a high rate. I learned that elephants are able to communicate by infrasound below the range of human hearing. This way they are able to avoid human contact. Forest elephants look different from Savannah elephants as they have chocolate brown skin. They also have a different diet. I learned that chimps can mimic antelope calls in order to trap and kill them - - not so different from human beings. Between the logging, civil wars and poaching, much of the forest is gone except for designated wildlife areas. I found this the most interesting article in the book, by far.

Another essay I enjoyed is called 'Power Trip'. It is about a woman who enjoys going to freakish places. She once went on a free trip to a mayonnaise factory. She is now planning to go on a free trip to a nuclear power plant. I don't think that a nuclear power plant is particularly freaky but it is a pretty freaky way to spend one's vacation.

I think Ian Frazier did a good job of picking out diverse and interesting articles for this collection.

This book is filled largely with the type of article you'd read part of while waiting in the doctor's office, and never lament not being able to finish it (or even recall you had started it). Though there are certainly a few gems, I found so many of the stories boring, meandering, droll. The couple that are meant to be humorous are altogether unfunny. And almost NONE of them is actually about travel.

Skip this book. If you want a collection of stories resplendent with what it is that calles to a traveller's soul, try Wanderlust from the editors of Salon.com.